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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 10 Hansard (25 September) . . Page.. 3276 ..

MS REILLY (continuing):

working hard in this community for a number of years, for the benefit of both his local community and the ACT community. Once he has the temerity to talk to a member of this Assembly, he has to face this sort of accusation. It is quite outrageous. I thought we had a democratic process in the ACT that allowed people to call on Assembly members to represent them and to advocate for them. They should not have to be faced with accusations of collusion. They want to get some action. They want to get a response from the Government and be included in the upgrading plan. This seems to have been the problem.

Mr Kaine put out a press release in which he listed the number of times DUS officers have supposedly visited Curtin. I think a number of people in the Curtin shops were quite surprised to find that officers had been there so often. Maybe this was the litter patrol, rather than someone looking at what can be done to upgrade those shops. There was also a suggestion that there was a response from government officers after we launched the petition on 1 July. There was a phone call from the Canberra Places people and then again the dead silence that seems to have characterised this matter all the way through. They get a response and some media, and then nothing else happens. There is total silence and they are left in limbo, wondering whether they will get any action at all.

We had a similar situation following the presentation of the petition in this place in August. Suddenly DUS people visited, put a bit of concrete in and replaced a few pavers. This is supposed to be paying attention to Curtin. This is not what we are talking about. We are talking about looking at the total fabric of the place because of its age. I have continued to receive complaints about the shopping centre. I visit there regularly because it is part of my local area, and people stop me to tell me that they have had problems, that they have fallen over or that they really love this centre and want to know why it is being ignored. The area needs to have an extensive upgrade. We need to look at the paving, the way stormwater is handled, the toilets, the parking, the signage, the lighting and equipment for children. It is not a matter of shoving in a bit of concrete and replacing a few pavers. The area needs extensive refurbishment.

The sole traders who make up the shopping centre at Curtin are business people working hard for the Canberra community and their local area. Those opposite, this Liberal Government, claim that they support business. They claim that they are looking after the business interests in this town and Labor is not, but as soon as business asks for something the Liberals treat them with total disrespect. If you visited Curtin, you would see that some of the traders have spent quite extensive quantities of money on upgrading their shops and ensuring that they are providing good services to the people who use them. Even ACTTAB is doing up the betting shop in Curtin. They think it is important enough to improve the way it looks and to provide a better service to their customers. If ACTTAB can do it, why can we not have other government bodies looking at improving the Curtin shopping centre? It provides a wide variety of services to a large area in the Woden Valley. It is one of the group centres that still have banks. It has a large supermarket chain that would love to extend if there was room; but this Government does not want to play its part, come to the party and go into partnership to get a good-quality shopping centre. You wonder who is supported in this situation.

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